ICAN President Desirre Andrews was interviewed this morning on KPFT out of Houston, TX during the Whole Mother show. You can listen here.
Archives for 2009
We Freakin' Did it: A Freewheelin' VBA3C in Milwaukee
A beautiful birth story is making the rounds online. What makes this particular story so inspiring is the fact that it shouldn’t have happened, at least not by current obstetric practice standards.
Annmarie Schulte gave birth to her first three children by cesarean, a fact that should have landed her square in the OR for her fourth birth. Instead, she chose to go for a VBA3C (vaginal birth after three cesareans). And she did it….just not in the location she planned. Apparently, babies don’t wait for rush hour traffic!
The proud papa’s announcement upon arrival at the hospital that “we freakin’ did it” and Annmarie’s declaration, “I feel awesome” say it all. Empowered birth is beautiful.
Read the full story here.
Guest Blogger: Is a Woman in Labor a “Person”? New Assaults on Pregnant Women’s Civil Rights in NJ Case
Bringing ICAN’s 25-year-plus tradition of support and education in the mother-to-mother and sister-to-sister model into the internet age, we have invited passionate blogging women to join us around our virtual circle of women. We hope to introduce you to new voices that you have not heard before, and also to respected voices that will already be well-known to you.
This week we welcome our guest blogger Louise Roth, a professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. Her current research studies how health insurance and malpractice in the United States influence reproduction and childbirth, especially the rise in cesarean sections.
This blog originally appeared on the Huffington Post on July 21, 2009. It is cross-posted here by permission.
Yet another ruling is providing legal support for the false belief that obstetricians are infallible, and stripping pregnant women of basic civil rights that are accorded to other individuals. In the case, New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services v. V.M. and B.G., the New Jersey appellate court found that V.M. and B.G. had abused and neglected their child, based on the fact that the mother, V.M. refused to consent to a cesarean section and behaved erratically while in labor. The mother gave birth vaginally without incident, and the baby was “in good medical condition.” Then she was never returned to her parents, and the judge in the case approved a plan to terminate their parental rights and give custody of the child to foster parents. What, beyond the obvious, is wrong with this picture?
First, from a legal perspective, individuals have a right to informed consent and bodily integrity. In obstetrics, informed consent is a blurry concept since many hospitals perform obstetric procedures on laboring women without informing them of the evidence concerning those procedures or their risks. Perhaps this legal case illustrates how paternalistic hospitals can be with respect to pregnant women – assuming that the hospital staff know best and that informed consent is unnecessary. Never mind that hospitals tend to be run with organizational efficiency, rather than patient interests, in mind. In this specific case, one obstetrician who tried to convince the mother to consent to a c-section concluded that she was not psychotic and had the capacity for informed consent with regard to the c-section. It is clear within the law there is no informed consent without informed refusal, so this obstetrician’s conclusion should have made V.M.’s refusal to consent to the c-section her decision alone. If this mother is not legally permitted to refuse major abdominal surgery, then she is clearly stripped of her civil rights to informed consent.
In fact, individuals are not legally required to consent to invasive procedures even to save other individuals, including fetuses that lack full legal status. But in this case the district and appellate courts subverted a pregnant woman’s informed medical decision-making in the name of fetal rights, arguing that her refusal was a form of abuse and neglect of the child that had not yet been born. This is another dangerous precedent, along with other court-ordered cesarean cases, that will allow all pregnant women to lose their rights to bodily integrity and informed consent. It may be understandable, if not excusable, that the courts don’t understand medicine or recognize that medical judgment is fallible, but it is hard to understand how they could so fundamentally misinterpret the law, in which performing surgery on an individual without that person’s permission can constitute criminal “battery” under common law.
The court’s opinion also suggests that lawmakers have no concept of what it is like to be in labor. Women in labor tend to find themselves on a different mental plane, where they have to focus inward and work with their bodies to give birth. As midwives know, some women become belligerent. Some seek privacy and seclusion. Most women in labor are likely to find the routine and usually unnecessary procedures of hospitals to be invasive and unwelcome. Yet the courts that decided this case didn’t seem to be aware that women are unlikely to behave the same way when they are in labor than when they aren’t. The decision cites hospital records that describe the mother, V.M., as “combative,” “uncooperative,” erratic,” noncompliant,” “irrational” and “inappropriate.” Also, her husband indicated that the way she was acting was not her “normal manner and that she is not as ‘tranquil.’” Why would anyone expect a woman in labor to be compliant, tranquil, or rational? What kinds of expectations does our society have for women undergoing a powerful physiological process, often with an absurd amount of poking, prodding, and general interference? This mother was uncooperative with hospital staff, but clearly her uncooperativeness had nothing to do with the well-being of her baby. There is no reason to believe that she did not have the well-being her baby as her top priority, even though she was not a model patient. There is also no reason to believe that everything the hospital staff wanted to do was essential or even beneficial for the well-being of either mother or baby. In fact, typical obstetric care engages in many procedures that are unnecessary and often harmful, more out of habit and for the convenience of hospital staff than in the best interest of patients.
While the court opinion also focuses on the parents’ psychiatric diagnoses (which are fallible medical judgments) and their history of care in determining their fitness as parents and abrogating their parental rights, their psychiatric state would never have been questioned if the mother had not refused invasive abdominal surgery – which was entirely within her rights. The tragic consequence for this family was separation from their infant daughter from the moment of her otherwise uneventful vaginal birth. That kind of injustice can’t have been good for the psyche.
Ricki Lake's New Celebrity Birth Series
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Amy Slotnick
My Best Birth
Amy@mybestbirth.com
(646) 335-2684
RICKI LAKE LAUNCHES EXCLUSIVE CELEBRITY WEBISODE SERIES ON MYBESTBIRTH.COM
Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Laila Ali, Melissa Joan Hart, Alyson Hannigan are among featured celebrities sharing personal birth stories as part of the series
Los Angeles, June 25, 2009–Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein, the documentarians behind the critically-acclaimed film The Business of Being Born and authors of Your Best Birth, will exclusively preview clips of their new film on MyBestBirth.com as a webisode series. This includes, never-before-seen interviews from celebrities Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Melissa Joan Hart, Alyson Hannigan, Laila Ali, Kellie Martin, Sarah Wayne Callies, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Joely Fisher and others, discussing their personal birth experiences.
Cindy Crawford’s birth story began the series on July 8th and it will culminate with an online chat with Crawford herself answering people’s questions from July 27 to 31 on MyBestBirth.com. The other celebrity stories will immediately follow.
Cindy Crawford’s birth story websiodes can be viewed at: http://www.mybestbirth.com/page/cindy-crawford-part-1
The trailer for the webisode series can be viewed at MyBestBirth.com or http://www.youtube.com/mybestbirth.
For more information, please visit MyBestBirth.com or contact Amy Slotnick at Amy@mybestbirth.com
# # #
About Ricki Lake: Actress, producer, filmmaker and author Ricki Lake has reinvented herself at every stage of her 20 year career. Lake has gone from starring in the 80s classic Hairspray to hosting the long-running Ricki Lake talk show for 11 years—while continuing to star in feature films and appear in television projects. Lake has again evolved her career—this time to include birth advocate, documentarian and author with the recent releases of the critically-acclaimed film The Business of Being Born and pregnancy guide, Your Best Birth. Proving that her entertainment influence will always be multi-hyphenated, she presently hosts and executive produces the Vh1 hit series, Charm School with Ricki Lake.
About Abby Epstein: Director and Producer Abby Epstein helmed the acclaimed documentary The Business of Being Born, executive produced by Ricki Lake. The success of the film inspired Abby and Ricki’s recent book, Your Best Birth. Abby made her film directing debut at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival with the documentary feature, Until the Violence Stops. On Broadway, Abby spent four years as the resident director of the musical RENT, overseeing the London premiere and two National Tours. She directed RENT in Mexico City, Barcelona and Madrid. Off Broadway, Abby directed over 100 celebrity actresses in The Vagina Monologues along with the National tour and premieres in Toronto and Mexico City.
What I Love About My Cesarean
Jasmine Ojala is a mother of two children and a member of ICAN of the Twin Cities. In this post she shares her reflections on what she’s learned from her births.
I have learned and grown so much through my two birth experiences. I had a traumatic cesarean three and a half years ago and a beautiful unattended homebirth just under 2 years ago… but, I am still so raw and emotional when it comes to my cesarean… I know there are many others here who can relate… I carry a lot of guilt around for the decisions I made during my cesarean born baby’s pregnancy, labor and delivery. I know now that I was very ignorant about my rights, my options, the scientific facts, etc.
Thinking about the VBAC a lot today, and with every wondrous, beautiful thing that happened with my VBAC baby’s birth, it has made me mourn even more deeply what I missed with my cesarean born child’s birth. I should be happy that I even got to experience a birth like that at all, painless-orgasmic-peaceful, everything I wanted… but I am just even more angry now that I really know what I lost out on before…
My husband is so supportive, but I think he secretly thinks I should be “over” everything by now, especially since the VBAC. But, I am still talking about, pouring over and investigating anything and everything I can get my hands on even remotely relating to birth. He doesn’t get it. He understands that I do what I am doing now to help any woman I can, even if I only can help one…. But I can tell it is getting old for him.
Anyway, I recently did the thing where you write out the positive things about your cesarean experience. So here is my list in no particular order:
1. I am not so ignorant anymore. The cesarean brought me out of my self-imposed ignorance. That was one of the best things the cesarean did for me. It taught me that I have a mind and I can study and I /should /put that to use. And I have.
2. The cesarean served as a way for me to receive some attention that I was craving from my mother. That may sound horrible, and I guess in some ways it is, but I didn’t realize that until I started to make my list. My mother has never been a “mothering” type- I hardly ever saw her, much less spent time with her. But she sure was a-motherin’ me after the cesarean. It was nice to have a mom.
3. Recovering from the trauma of the cesarean provided me and my husband with the opportunity to communicate on a whole new level. We have always had great communication but I had trouble allowing my “weakness” or “vulnerability” out in the open. I don’t like to ask for help- I don’t like to not handle things myself. The aftermath and recovery from the cesarean eliminated all choice I had in the matter, and all the better too, we are even closer now.
4. The cesarean opened my eyes to birth in our culture and opened up my options and alternatives for future births. I know many other women have said this before, but I would not know what I know now and be the person I have become if it weren’t for the cesarean. It is a shame that a major, traumatizing birth experience is what I needed to shake my beliefs and values like that but unfortunately, in our culture, that is usually how it is done. I wish that could be changed. Why is it that I needed a sledgehammer to the guts in order to ‘wake up’??
5. The cesarean has also shown me my great capacity to love my children and myself. I have a love for my children that is open and endless. I know I would sacrifice myself for them in a heartbeat because I’ve already done it once. I have learned to love my body too- it tried so hard. I used to think it failed me, but the reality was that I failed it, and my body was so resilient. Despite all the obstacles I allowed in it’s way, I *almost* gave birth. My body took to healing itself right away and did a great job… I love this magnificent body and mind of mine that can conceive, bear, birth and raise such beautiful people!
6. I have learned much about my own strength and my abilities to cope and grow. I feel like I am a better person, a stronger person, a more patient person. I am a lot more empathetic than I’ve ever been before. I also have a deep respect for myself that never existed before. I see myself the way I really am, rather than what I think I “should” be.
7. The cesarean taught me that no matter how much control I want or how much I think I have, life isn’t fair and never will be. Sometimes things just happen.
8. I learned it is up to me to deal with the consequences of my decisions, good or bad- no matter who/what I may feel is at “fault.”
That is what I love about my cesarean.
But you know what- I still desperately wish I’d had a blissfully ignorant vaginal birth. There is much longer list of all the things I hate about my cesarean, but that is too familiar a story.